last supper

i can't believe it

but the time has come.

this is a post about our last meal overseas.

sure there was a small breakfast the next morning,

some Burger King at the bangkok airport during a layover,

and several in-flight meals while traveling over the pacific ocean,

but this was our last true meal.

after five wonderful and sunny days in ngwe saung

where we did nothing but lay on the beach, read books, and try not to worry about life once we got back home,

we took our final myanmar bus ride (we are not missing those)

and spent the last 12 hours back in yangon.

after getting to our hotel we realized that we had a plethora of burmese kyat left

so we decided to splurge on a super fancy dinner.

it was a meal to remember.

with fabulous drinks, 

tasty food (quite a rare find for us in myanmar)

and great company,

including the wait staff who, of course, 

wanted to hang around and speak in english during our dinner.

i will never forget it,

and i especially will never forget how we were able to make it happen...

-e

the view during dinner. the shwedagon paya

turned out we showed up during happy hour when drinks were buy one get one free

so we got a couple...

steven's lamb, which was cheaper than the chicken.... we didnt argue

my comfort food. 

us. 42 hours later we landed in san francisco...

burmese tea

while in myanmar we tried to 

stay away from anything that had tap water in it.

we both already experienced travelers sickness

in both japan and thailand and

we were not in the mood to go through that again.

we did, however, frequently enjoy a nice cup of burmese tea.

and since the water was boiling hot,

we felt we were safe as far as bacteria was concerned.

when trying to describe burmese tea

i tell people to first think of thai tea

as it's made with a standard black tea.

in contrast, where the thai people add a little bit of sweetened condensed milk,

the burmese go above and beyond.

we watched a couple people as they made our tea

and it was astonishing to see the ratio of tea to milk

(the phrase "would you like some tea with that sweetened condensed milk" regularly ran through my mind).

our first cup was a bit hard to finish but after that i was rather hooked.

not as much for the nice boiling tea in the middle of a 90 degree day,

more for the delicious fried treats that always accompanied the drink...

-e

we learned that each cup of burmese tea is accompanied by an endless supply of chinese black tea that we used to dilute our cups

i'm sure i'm not spelling this right but these were my favorite, samosas, flaky outside with sauteed mixed veggies inside

if the tea isn't sweet enough for you, these will take you over the edge

soi 38 night market

we somehow got lucky and

ended up staying at this great hostel in bangkok.

one of the best features was the fact that it was located

on the same street as the soi 38 night market. 

after 5pm half of the block gets crowded with street 

vendors selling incredible food and drink.

we ate here every night for three days and we never regretted it...

-e

i'll never get sick of mangos

duck and dumpling soup

duck over rice with chinese cabbage

mango with coconut sticky rice. i ate this... several times...

the lady who is smiling recognized me and would start preparing one every time she saw me!

the tastes of osaka

while we were in japan

we ate some incredible food.

japan did not let us down yet!

one snack which turned out to be

one of steven's favorite meals 

was tako yaki ( fried batter with octopus).

usually we got this street food at 

a little stall while sightseeing,

but our friends in osaka knew of a place

where you could cook your own

tako yaki.

steven got a chance to 

practice his skills,

and we built some more

memories that will last a lifetime...

-e